Idol’s fine art of acting the fool
HHH by Bernard Cribbins Constable, £20
WHAT does the name Bernard Cribbins conjure up? The Railway Children? Jackanory? Doctor Who? The Wombles? Two-Way Stretch? Comic songs like Right Said Fred or The Hole In The Ground?
He is an all-rounder: a comic actor who can move you to tears; a shapeshifter who is always somehow Bernard Cribbins.
If anyone else subtitled their autobiography “75 Years Of Doing Just About Everything”, it might seem like hubris but in Cribbins’ case it looks like modesty.
He has been “acting the fool” for more than seven decades. Now 89, he remains the voice of our childhood.
Cribbins has been a mainstay of radio, stage and screens both large and small for three quarters of a century.
From his beginnings as a 14-year-old in Oldham repertory company to becoming an unlikely pop star, he trots through his life’s adventures with a candour and ease that makes even his time as a paratrooper in Palestine in 1947 seem funny.
He writes as he talks so you can “hear” his voice as he reels off anecdotes and drops names like an 89-year-old schoolboy. He has worked alongside comedy genius Peter Sellers, Beatles’ producer George Martin and horror master Peter Cushing. His first film was Yangtse Incident in 1957. The most exciting aspect of his role was having scenes with pre-Doctor Who William Hartnell who was a big star in the 1950s.
He then went into a musical, playing a talking dog. Cribbins’ sense of the ridiculous accompanies most of his stories, alleviating the excessive chumminess of his writing. Early doubts about his abilities were not helped by Spike Milligan who told him: “You’re not funny.” The fact that he has rarely been out of work goes some way to countering Milligan’s claim.
Playing Lennie the Dip in Two-Way Stretch brought him into contact with Peter Sellers, whom he worshipped, and Lionel Jeffries. When Jeffries directed The Railway Children, he cast Cribbins as station-master Perks and cinema history was made.
He recalls being chuffed to bits when Noël Coward included his song The Hole In The Ground as one of his Desert Island Discs – and made it the one record he would save from the waves.
He is not above a little self-promotion, establishing that he was the voice of Paddington Bear on LPs and cassettes before Michael Hordern took over for TV. And a story about him painting Kenneth Williams’ bare bottom while filming Carry On Jack made me laugh so much, I dropped the book.
As he meanders towards an open-ended conclusion (“Goodbye for now”), Cribbins reveals an as-yet-unfulfilled ambitionambition to play Clint Eastwood’s father in a western. Go ahead, Clint. Make his day.
Few contemporaries captured Britain’s indomitable wartime spirit as well or as wittily as the cartoonist Carl Giles. Now, for the first time, the very best of the cartoons he produced between 1939 and 1945 are brought together, including many that have not seen the light of day in over 75 years. Giles’s work provided a crucial morale boost – and much-needed laughs – to a population suffering daily privations and danger.
GILES THE COLLECTION 2019
PUBLISHED BY HAMLYN
Fans of Giles will be thrilled to receive the latest annual treat from the archives of the celebrated cartoonist, whose work won him huge admiration and accolades including being voted the best cartoonist of the 20th century. The 2019 collection takes a wry look at how Giles observed the most seismic and superficial events of his time. From January to December throughout the years, the common threads of life then and now are scrupulously interrogated under his pen.